


Where a Wedding Has Been

by Savageandwise



Category: The Beatles
Genre: Angst, F/F, F/M, Infidelity, McLennon, Outside Observer, Sorry very negative John portrayal, Work of fiction, not my take on reality
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-16
Updated: 2018-02-19
Packaged: 2019-03-19 01:48:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,802
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13694337
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Savageandwise/pseuds/Savageandwise
Summary: In a car on the way back home from the airport post India trip, John confesses everything to Cynthia.





	1. I have been unfaithful to you

**Author's Note:**

> This is a story I've been thinking about for a long time. I wrote the start about a year ago in fact.  
> In Cynthia's book she says John told her about his infidelities while they were in the kitchen at Kenwood. I changed it to the car because I liked the dynamic.
> 
> This is a very dark fic. If you don't want to read about infidelity and John being mean just don't read.
> 
> Before we get into discussion about whether or not I like Cyn: i do. This story is from her point of view. Any negative descriptions of herself are her pov in the fic and not my personal opinion.

When they got into the car to drive home from the airport John started to talk. Cynthia had been wishing he would talk for weeks. Maybe even years. She had hoped they might find the time in India but they hadn't. He hadn't. And now he was finally talking. When he started it all came pouring out and he went on and on and on in that lovely voice of his until she wanted to cover her ears to block him out. She just sat there though, taking it all in. He was looking at her at least. At least he was talking to her.

He told her about all the girls. Hundreds of them to hear him tell it. Too many to count. He didn't even know all their names. Then he started to list the names he knew. Women she knew. Women she'd admired. Maureen Cleave, Joan Baez, Alma Cogan, the woman next door. He named that insane, stalker Japanese artist who kept sending him things. Cynthia was incredulous. How could he? He'd said so many horrible things about the woman.

Cyn looked down at her handbag. She felt the dull smack of realisation hard against her mind. This was all true. He wasn't making it up. It wasn't a game. She'd wanted him to tell her the truth and now he was. She opened her handbag and then snapped it shut again. Open. And shut. Open. Until John reached over and covered her hands with his to stop her nervous fidgeting. He looked up at the partition separating them from the driver. He couldn't hear or see them but John looked anxious all the same.

“Aren't you going to say anything?” he asked. 

He craned his neck to peer into her eyes. He looked so young, like the boy he'd been. The boy with the gaping hole in his soul she'd spent so much time trying to fill. What was there to say? She'd known it. She'd known it already. 

“Okay,” Cynthia said. 

“Okay? Is that all you have to say about it?” he raised his voice, leaned in even closer, eyes flashing dangerously.

She flinched, ready for him to strike her. But he didn't. He hadn't hit her in years and years. And he hadn't loved her. As if the two things were somehow connected. John let out a sound of disgust.

“It's alright,” she said. “You've told me. Now I know.” 

She gave him a wavering smile. John leaned back and stared at her. The muscles twitched in his face, his eyes were wild. He opened and shut his mouth the way Cynthia had opened and shut her handbag. Opened and shut.

“Paul,” John said.

Cynthia looked up at him in confusion. Her tired, struggling brain frantically scrambling to make connections. 

“What about him?” Cyn asked. “Did he know?”

Of course he did. They probably all did. He told them everything. He was married to them.

“I slept with Paul,” John said after a long pause. “Is it still okay?”

She couldn't wrap her mind around the information. They were just words. Gibberish. Goo goo g’joob.

“What are you saying? What do you mean?” she asked weakly.

“I mean I fucked him. He fucked me. So many… too many times to count.”

His voice was harsh, cruel. He made it sound so crude like that. Like they were animals. She stared at him, lips trembling, her lashes heavy with sudden tears.

“How?” she asked. 

She didn't know why she asked it. Only that she couldn't stop the word from tumbling out her mouth. John gave her a withering look. 

“I took him… like you would a woman. Shoved up in him till he was full of me. Or he took me. And it was sweet.” 

He shivered, remembering. 

“It was so sweet,” he said, voice breaking.

Cynthia closed her eyes as if she could block out the image forming in her head.

“But… when?” she asked. 

The tears were flowing now. She thought of how kind Paul was to her. How gentle. How he always had time to play with Julian. She expected betrayal from John. She expected pain. But not from Paul.

“On and off. Ever since… since the start,” he said it soft now. A heartbreaking tenderness threaded in his voice, like gold woven into a tapestry.

“The start of the Beatles?” she asked.

“The start of you and me. It's always been Paul, you know?”

She'd known that. Everyone had. But she never imagined the extent of the thing. The decadent, sprawling madness of it. Like peering over the edge of the world on a medieval map of the world: Here be dragons.

“What does this mean? What are you saying?” she asked, a sob escaping with a hiccup of emotion.

What about me?  
But she didn't say it out loud. She didn't dare. 

“I mean, I love him. I love him. I always have. I can't…” 

He screwed up his face like he was trying not to cry and all she wanted to do is take him in her arms and rock him to her breast. 

“... I can't do this anymore,” he said.

She realised all at once he must be talking about her. He must be talking about their marriage. He used to say he loved her every day. He used to say he'd die without her. They had a child together, a life. And now he was saying none of it was real. Like an acid vision. She'd swallowed a bitter pill. It was all smoke and broken promises.

“But… I don't understand. What about Jane?”

He laughed unkindly. 

“What about Jane? Paul's no monk, you know? He always had you fooled, didn't he?” 

Cynthia thought about Paul, his heart shaped face, his long dark lashes. She thought of the two of them, heads bent together, writing their songs, telling each other secrets. John always insisted they all holiday together if possible. He never wanted her alone. She imagined them in bed together. Their bodies wrapped around each other as their voices did. Creating something else. Something enduring. She shuddered to think of it.

“His nice manners, sweet-talking… fucking… every mother's fantasy,” John continued.

He said he loved him but it didn't sound like it. But then love never sounded like a poem with John. His love was steeped in sadness, with resentment. And the more it hurt, the higher he rated it. How deep his love for Paul must be then, judging by the dark smudges under his eyes, the lines of misery around his mouth.

_I can't do this anymore._

John wasn't talking about her. He was talking about Paul. 

“What do you want to do?” she asked.

It was finally here, the moment she'd feared for years. Now he would leave her. He'd finally leave her. They warned her about boys like John but she didn't listen to them. She was willing to bet no one warned Jane about boys like Paul. There was some cruel comfort in that. That she might be princess-pretty and successful as Cynthia was plain and dull but that didn't matter in the end. 

John shrugged awkwardly. Much of the fire had gone out of him with his confession. He seemed smaller, paler. His hand was inches from hers and she took it, ran her thumb over his knuckles. He looked startled at her action. He looked grateful. They had arrived in Kenwood minutes ago but neither of them made any move to get out of the car. Cynthia tried to concentrate on how happy she was to see Julian again. How pleased he'd be with his new toys. Beside her John was shaking like a leaf.

“I did… I do... love you… you know. I love you,” he stuttered. “I didn't mean… it was both…”

She was so relieved she could barely breathe. And then she remembered John never had a problem saying those words to her. They were an assortment of syllables that had long since lost their original sentiment. She wondered if Paul knew. If John had ever dared say them to Paul. Somehow she doubted it.

“It's okay,” Cynthia said again. “It's okay.”


	2. A rose by any other name

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After John asks Cynthia for a divorce Paul comes to see her bearing a single red rose.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I reread parts of Cyn's book to write this. Floods of tears.  
> Thank you to Twinka, my dear for reading and helping me figure out the ending. Black coffee and biscuits.
> 
> Thanks to Emma for liking it.

He waited in the car a full half hour before getting out. Cynthia knew it was him. He got out once, stood there and then got back in. He was holding a red rose in his hands.

Cynthia had stopped crying days ago. Now she was simply numb, resigned. In the back of her mind was the faint hope that John would be back, like the itch from a faded mosquito bite. Seeing Paul made it ache like an old war injury. The pain from a phantom limb.

She was almost certain he was about to drive off again without even saying hello and then he got out again, strode towards the door and rang the bell. 

“This is surprise!” Cynthia said as if she hadn't been watching him the whole time.

He gave a little bow, and presented the bloom with a flourish. 

“How are you Cyn-love?” he asked. 

There was a shifty, anxious look in his eyes. And he was pale, his lovely face covered in a thick dark beard. She'd only seen him once since John's confession and they hadn't been alone. She wondered if he’d let on about it or maintain that sweet innocence that was his signature when he wasn't being a cheeky, angel-faced scamp. Jane had left him a few weeks before, after catching him in bed with another woman. But Cynthia knew that's not what Paul was upset about.

I know now, Cynthia thought. I know all about you and John. He said he loved you. Was that it? Did you love him too? Then why did he choose her?

“Would you like some tea?” she asked instead.

She hadn’t answered his question but he didn't ask again. 

“Ta, love" 

So she made tea and she fetched the good biscuits from the pantry. She'd bought them for John before he left her. She wasn't allowed because of her diet so now she just trotted them out every time someone came by to offer their condolences. Condolences, as if she were a widow. She'd felt like a widow ever since the first day of marriage. 

She found a vase for the rose and set it down beside the teapot. Then they chatted about everything except what he'd obviously come to talk about.

“Have you seen him?” Cynthia asked at last. 

Paul seemed to shatter at the words. Without the smile he looked impossibly young and fragile, made of glass. He struggled for a moment, groping for the right words like a fish gasping for water. 

“Oh, Cynthia,” he whispered.

When he looked up tears were shining in his eyes. He was stooped forward as though he were in pain. 

“I don't know him anymore. He's so changed,” he continued.

That wasn't really true. John was changeable as the sea. He shed identities like a snake shed skin. The boy Paul loved had been discarded. Cynthia loved John in all his incarnations.

“I'm so sorry,” Paul said. 

He wiped his eyes on his shirt cuff, casually as if he thought she wouldn't notice. Cynthia was good at silence. She'd spent a lifetime honing the skill. She'd abandoned art to practice looking the other way and handing people handkerchiefs when she was the one who should be crying.

“He shouldn't have done that to you. I don't know what's come over him. This isn't right,” Paul said when he'd regained his composure.

She didn't say anything for a while. She just sipped her tea and pointedly ignored the biscuits.

“It's alright, I know you're suffering too, Paul,” Cynthia said, choosing words carefully as if the sentence were a minefield and a wrong turn might cause it to blow up in her face.

“I'm not sure I… well, he seems to have lost interest in the band recently. But I've no right to complain. He hasn't…he left you… he hasn't...” Paul stuttered.

“But you've lost him as well, haven't you? He told me the truth, Paul. I know about…” she said, sucking in her breath and holding it for a moment before continuing. “... I know about you two.”

Paul looked down at the table. He was staring at the knuckles of his left hand. When he looked up again he was transformed. There was a wildness to him, a frenzied expression that distorted his pretty face till it was nearly unrecogniseable. 

“Us… two…” he whispered. 

He was pale as paper, even his lips were white. Cynthia nodded slowly.

“I think you must have misunderstood him.” Paul’s voice was thin to the breaking point.

“No. No misunderstanding. He told me you…”

_Fucked. I fucked him or he fucked me. Like you would a woman._

“... he told me you were… lovers,” she finished, a furious flush spread across her face. She remembered the way John had shivered. _It was sweet._

“Oh, god,” Paul said. He covered his face with his hands. He shivered as well, as John had and Cynthia felt her stomach turn. “I'm so sorry.”

“Are you?” Cynthia asked, there was a sharpness to her tone that she didn't exactly feel. She used it on Julian frequently when she scolded him.

Paul reacted as Julian might have. He twitched in shock, his eyes wide and mouth slack.

“I don't know what to tell you,” he said softly. He couldn't look her in the eye.

“Is it true?” she asked, though she had no doubt it was.

He didn't answer at once, he just sighed, his breath catching in his throat and escaping through his nose in a short huff.

“Yes.”

“Since… since you were lads?”

“Yes,” Paul said in a small voice.

“He said… he told me he loved you. He always… it was always you.”

Paul started laughing, it was the ugliest sound Cynthia had ever heard pass his lips. Bitter, twisted and completely devoid of humour.

“If that was true then why is he with her? How could this happen to us?”

How could this happen to me? That's what he meant. Why isn't he with me?

“He wants to put aside everyone who reminds him of himself,” Cynthia said.

“But why? He's John Lennon! Who else would he want to be?” Paul asked, practically shouting.

Paul wouldn't understand. He never doubted himself the way John did. Never felt himself unanchored, intangible. 

“Am I real? Can you see me, Cyn?” John would ask her. “Am I still here?”

Now he was asking her, Yoko Ono. _Am I here? Can you see me? Can you feel me?_

“He takes her to the studio, she won't let him out of her sight! It's like… like she's bewitched him!” Paul said miserably.

He'd forgotten, or he'd never noticed the way John used to look at him, like there was no one else in the room, only Paul. They used to laugh about it. But Cynthia had never entertained the possibility they might have been intimate. If the others had they had never let on.

“He can't have loved me. If he could do this... He can't have…” 

Paul stopped speaking and looked at Cynthia with horror stamped on his face, as if he'd only now realised how insensitive he was being. She had meant to tell him how sorry she was to hear Jane had left him. But that seemed so silly now. Jane was clearly the last thing on his mind.

“I'm sorry,” Paul said yet again.

She wished he'd stop saying it. Paul hadn't taken her husband away. He hadn't kept him away from his son.

“I came here for you. I wanted… I… in the car just now… I wrote a song for Julian. Shall I play it for you?”

Cynthia nodded, grateful to turn the subject away from John. She fetched a guitar John had left and handed it to Paul. He played her the bare bones of a song. Filling in the missing lyrics with sounds and random words. And na na na nananana. Hey Jules. After he stopped playing they just stared at each other, smiled until their faces hurt. 

“Marry me, Cyn,” Paul said all at once. “At least we have each other, yeah?” 

She started to cry then, laughing through her tears.

“Oh, hell,” Cynthia said. She reached over and took a biscuit, ate it in two bites. “Might as well.”

She wasn't sure if she was talking about the proposal or the biscuit. Paul, laughing so hard he doubled over, ate two at once, as a child might. Their hands met over the plate of sweets and slid together. Then hands clasped they both cried. For John, the love they'd lost and broken promises.


End file.
